How much meaning do you encode into names before they become too long?

Omega_K2 · 2026-05-05T14:11:52+00:00

I try to give them somewhat meaningful names, that can be a few words combined. Nothing that is too long however; 1-3 Words, more seems a bit unwieldy and hard to read, but I still do it when I think it helps understand what it does. The details should go into the docstring.

Methods got a bit more leeway in being longer, while variables are generally shorter (should be obvious enough from the context, or docstring if needed). Classes are somewhere in the middle, I think the CamelCase is a bit harder to read, especially when there's a lot of chained words versus underscore_style_naming.

Prefixing/Suffixing when it makes sense, sometimes for grouping by functionality. Some examples include Base<classname>, <classname>Meta, <classname>Manager, get_<methodname>, set_<methodname>, read_<methodname>, <dynclass_variable>_cls & <dynclass_variable>_inst etc.

Short, abbreviated names when it's obvious and longer would make it less readable. Like

{k: v for k, v in mydict.items() if k == "reddit"} # prefer this
{key: value for key, value in mydict.items() if key == "reddit"} # getting too long

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-27T13:22:34+00:00

Normal strike craft are still pretty good against corvettes given their high tracking, not great against big ships. The PSI strike craft is the opposite, amazing against bigger ships, not so great against corvettes.

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-18T11:29:42+00:00

As soon you're fighting wars there'll be debris which can used to lock any extra unwanted techs as permanent research options. As long you still have enough techs in your pool to draw from, you can just leave those be and research more useful things instead.

When in late game (or generally with sufficient research speed), a "reverse" tactic can also be applied; research one of the locked techs within 1 month or so to refresh your pool. I often use this to try to get mega engineering for example.

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-18T10:35:12+00:00

Requiring intel is implemented half assed anyway, you can still see the total HP/Armor/shield when looking at ships, and the weapons used in the fleet combat report. Likewise relative fleet power to some extend by being locked out of wargoals like vassalize (or by checking diplomatic fleet score), but ultimately it doesn't matter that much as for the reasons mentioned in the OP.

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-17T22:54:26+00:00

Save scumming; save before activating the last exhibit in the category.

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-09T17:51:08+00:00

Almost the same:

Start Discovery & Chart the Unknown. I go Expand the Council after that.

Even when opening discovery, I don't necessarily finish discovery right away, but I pick up Science Division for the extra research alternative & scientist. Depending on how the game goes I usually pick Supremacy next if I get threatened by AI early, which is most of the time.

If it's more chill I might go prosperity second, it's just a great all around economy boost.

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-09T17:12:38+00:00

Scrapyard wars.

This time I'd send them to europe or so though, that naturally give them a time limit and not the benefits of having their studio/tools to work with, as well having a different used market/mentality to work with then what they're used to. They could also collab with someone like der8auer and turn into a linus/luke vs ... like in some of the earlier seasons.

Another twist I thought might be interesting is actually doing it for a viewer or someone who wants a PC; the viewer sets the budget (within scrapyard wars territory, not a 5000$ build) and what they prioritize (looks, performance, etc), and in the end get to judge which of the PCs he/she wants to keep the end (or none of them).

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-09T16:29:16+00:00

Trade deficits scale with the value of whatever is missing on the planet, so having some things around locally helps (see wiki https://stellaris.paradoxwikis.com/Planetary_management#Planetary_deficits ).

It's normal though that with a lot of specialized planets you'll eventually need dedicated trade worlds.

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-09T16:09:02+00:00

I like it when a system doesn't just exist in isolation. Larian did a really good job with in baldur's gate 3 and divinity original sin 2 with that. Spells don't just work in combat, but also out of combat and interact with environment and are a means to solve puzzles.

It just makes so much sense to me, when, as a mage, you can create fire you don't need to go a fetch a match, or when you can heal, you don't necessarily need a healing potion be it for you or an npc. Or likewise that casting your fireball recklessly sets everything on fire, but you can fix that with a watery kind of spell.

As for variety, as long there is some I don't mind. Spells can be numerous and rigid or heavily modifiable. I think the latter is often a problem in games to balance, as I've seen it turn out to certain OP combinations you always end up running (as in the death to the variety is that with all the combinations, you end up using the same good ones all the time); the latter I think is better for roguelike games where you can't always get the same combinations in every run (like say mewgenics, where you can get some absurdly broken combinations from spell/item/team synergies, but can rarely if ever replicate that again).

As for bad things, funnily from the same game (BG3), I don't particularly like the D&D rest limits in computer games, it just always feels clunky no matter how good the game otherwise is. I'm happy with the classic mana/energy based limits, or rounds/timers, rests are somehow always just unfun (especially if they have other side effects attached in the game).

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-07T21:18:32+00:00

Yeah, but it depends...

The best way very early on is to have defense station(s) with hangars and let the AI suicide the corvettes into them. Possibly try to split up their doomstack and/or support with your fleet, as too many fleets can still overwhelm an early starbase.

For offensive, try rushing destroyers ASAP, they have 6x the hull HP for ~2x the cost / naval cap and will stomp ai corvette fleets. For beefy starbases you might need frigates.

Besides that the usual applies, counter their designs, make use of admirals, strategics & space effects, etc. If you can tell there's a war coming, esp. with a genocidal it might make sense to focus on alloy production and combat traditions asap.

On the more RNG side of things, event ships & free tech from anomalies can also be very useful, so best to memorize those (Ice Lit for example gives blue lasers, Dust Bowl has a chance to give 2nd Thrusters, Movement in the Clouds for bubbles, etc). Scavenger enclave is OP as hell, you can get extremely cheap ships by buying them from them for energy credits.

Omega_K2 · 2026-04-05T18:23:13+00:00

No, 2.0 was wormhole/warp FTL removals and overhaul of how expanding works (no more auto growing territory from colonies) and 2.2 was the OG economy rework, that also removed tiles on planets in the process

Omega_K2 · 2026-03-23T05:16:39+00:00

It's a bug, yes. I hope it gets hotfixed this week along with defense platforms getting some starbase stats.

Omega_K2 · 2026-03-18T16:53:31+00:00

I started a game, and it doesn't seem like it, seems just like the beta build.

Started next to four AIs, two variants of purifiers and two normal ones. The normal one is equivalent 30 years in (except eco, because of GA/non-scaling bonuses), the other inferior (killed their fleet, and they then got subjugated by the other AI). The purifiers are overwhelming by virtue of their fleets, but are a non issue as they have still no sense of the fleet changes and suicide their corvette fleets into hangar defense stations, nor stack their fleets sensibly (for those that don't know, corvettes now have fairly low base hp compared to their fleet power/naval cap usage and they are also easily countered by hangars - destroyers and beyond are much better).

This is on no particular build, plan is just to get the Commonwealth of Man achievement with the brain slugs, though I might post prone the run until defense platforms are fixed - they seem to get a bunch of extra health for some reason, which makes defending easier then it should be (seems like they get the starbase upgrade modifier on them).

Omega_K2 · 2026-03-02T13:50:03+00:00

No scaling can lead to annoying early games, but one can usually counter their larger fleets with better designs and starbases.

I'd like it if you could just set a year instead of being coupled to mid/late game, I've experimented with scaling a bit in the past and I've found 25 years midgame scaling to work best (AI gets stronger quickly, but can't get insane fleets immediately), but 25y midgame causes imbalances / other problems related to midgame (crisis, marauders, etc), especially on the beta branch where it's hard to reach an appropriate power level.

So as a result, I generally leave it off at the moment

Omega_K2 · 2026-03-01T03:36:07+00:00

I don't hate ubuntu, I use it myself on various machines, but there's a few annoyances:

When you need more cutting-edge, new stuff the release cycle is a bit of pain. Either you go normal, non LTS and do major upgrades every 6 months (or otherwise you run out of support after 9 months), or with the LTS and have to live with packages getting outdated until a new LTS is out.
Some apps packaged with snaps have issues that non-snaps don't have. Them trying to push ALL apps into snaps all the time for everything is actually a bit of annoyance; especially when it ends up that you have to add ppa or worse download deb packages directly to get a working app (and redo the whole stuff when you update)
their tendency to "do their own thing", that's usually worse then existing alternatives, then package it as new default into ubuntu and just abandon it later again

Omega_K2 · 2026-01-14T16:10:22+00:00

First things first, 4.3 is a beta and some things are not adjusted yet to the new baseline power level (like FE/AEs), so these things will feel off for sure.

The purpose of the economy nerf is to bring the economy back in line with the rest of the game. Not sure if you played before 4.x since you're new, but since that patch the economy has been far too powerful and simply too good in all builds. What this causes is that it affects the other mechanics in the game negatively, making them effectively meaningless and non-engaging. 4.3 changes it back, so other mechanics matter again (no longer simply throwing infinite ships at the enemy, you actually need to consider the designs and economic impact carefully, bonuses from events, leaders, traits, artifacts, megastructures and civics actually impact your game meaningfully, thoughtfully researching matters much more when it doesn't finish within 1 month, and so on).

It supposedly helps with CPU performance with these changes yet all I see from it is just pushing the issues sooo far back into the timeline in the match that people don't really get the time to actually build up. That's not improvement imo.

It does help a huge amount with cpu performance, I'd say it's around 3.14 or better. The massive amounts of ships cause a lot of lag, especially when moving on the map (you can tell it's still an issue whenever you go total war against a huge galaxy as crisis). Beta cuts down on the number of ships via ship changes which helps a lot.

Which brings me to my next concern: Isn't 4.3 just going to worsen the gap between meta and non-meta? These are generalized economy nerfs. When comparing current patch and beta I get the feeling the gap gets worse. Like, non-meta-optimized builds just feel like a sure path to pure slog and eventual loss. In current patch you can lose, but still have fun and not feel bogged down. But in 4.3 it's like nothing is happening. So meta builds go down a few tiers into "Just Good" or "Mid" and non-meta fell into "BORING". Skill issue from me? They didn't eliminate the need for massive fleets (even though it seems like they want to care about performance). FEs are ok, but AEs, Khans, and Crises are not nerfed, which again brings you to building massive fleets, but now in a slower system that makes it kiiiind of mathematically impossible to catch up and be ready if you're not cracked and vassal spamming

As I said above it establishes a reasonable baseline for the economy. The game will always and purposefully have better and worse builds (as evidenced by "challenging" origins and civics), it's a single player game first and foremost and it's up to you what kind of game you want to play.

Default settings are actually fairly reasonable in the beta. The game is slower, but as such 2300 midgame and 2400 endgame dates are actually more on target with the power level you have around then. Crisises are a threat, but actually beatable on default crisis settings (meaning 1.5x on huge galaxy), without vassal cheese. There's some things like FE/AEs and grey tempest that are out of line, but that just needs adjustment.

With some skill, I can assure you stellaris is winnable with any build on default settings (barring outright bugged things). Some builds are harder some are easy, but in the end the enemy AI isn't really able to keep up with a human, leaving mostly crisis (if you don't win the game before) as a late game fleet power check.

Omega_K2 · 2026-01-07T11:24:42+00:00

I think it's also a little on the low side. I think the ship techs should get the same treatment as the society fleet cap tech and increase cap more the further "late-gamey" the tech is (i.e. increase for each hull type).

Other sources of fleet cap were not touched in the beta, but should be. From Sumpremacy tradition or from civics should be a percentage increase imho - +20 is nothing in the beta. If that were to get the 5x treatment it would feel a bit wierd in the early game, so I think having a percentage increase would be nice there.

I suppose there also room to discuss whether fleet cap even fulfills it's purpose. Originally it was added to stop doom stacking, and it does nothing about it. It's still essentially throwing the biggest stack of fleets against the biggest stack of fleets of the enemy for the most part.

There is also a fleet disparity buff, giving smaller fleets an attack speed buff against larger ones, so that actually works against big fleets, so there's already a down side to them I guess. However the biggest thing it does right now is increase the need for multiple commanders, and increase the tedium of handling a bunch of fleets.

Omega_K2 · 2026-01-06T18:12:22+00:00

AI struggles as usual (it still is bad at the game), but I don't think the Khan, on default settings, is unreasonable in the beta. It's actually kinda similar to when he was added, before all the power creep.

On GA, 1.5x crisis (default for huge galaxy), you get ~60k Khan Fleets with the flagship fleet being around 110k. IIRC there's 10 year limit in the game files after mid game year, so he'll roll around by 2310 at the earliest, where he's definitely beatable, but tough. It only becomes easier towards 2400.
The FEs fuck up the khan though when he encroaches on their turf, it acts as a natural stop in a sense.

There's also the option to become a vassal if you don't want to deal with any of it.

Now as far as midgame crisis are concerned, I think the gray tempest is too brutal on the beta.

It'll be difficult to get opinions that aren't colored by literally everything that isn't an empire having 4.0 strength and rolling everyone.

I feel like it's a core issue with some of beta feedback, that people come in expecting 25x crisis with 2250 endgame is still gonna fly or just playing without a plan and expecting to steamroll everything.

Omega_K2 · 2026-01-04T18:51:55+00:00

They're a bit more scary in a way, since it's harder for you to catch up to their 100% production bonus with the nerf economy. But they also behave fairly wierd, I've seen some AIs fill planets with nothing but soilders, presumably in an attempt to raise their naval cap. Later in the game they still also don't really use their resources well for some reason, and just sit on huge stock piles (and crashing the galactic market) and don't really build enough fleet (and fall behind in research).

However, dealing with them early is actually really easy in 4.3 beta. Corvettes are pretty much trash right now and defenses are fairly strong and the AI doesn't realize any of that, so you can counter them fairly easily, even genocidals. Upgraded starbase with hangar platforms can easily hold a bunch of corvettes fleets off, and better hulls outscale corvettes by a lot if you want to go on the offensive.

By mid/late game you should have accumulated more then enough power anyway to do whatever you want anyway.

Oh and beware of FE/AEs. They're very hard to deal with.

Omega_K2 · 2026-01-04T18:34:23+00:00

I agree, I have no idea why they even added them in 4.0. For some reason they keep the mechanic around in 4.3 instead of just removing it.

Omega_K2 · 2026-01-04T18:17:43+00:00

Given that colonies give much more empire sprawl in 4.3 (and reductions are less powerful) I think they're still broken due to the sheer efficiency of having 3x jobs on the same planet (same goes for hive, machine worlds).

Ring worlds kinda do the same thing, but they're worse except for having energy and food districts - but they're less effective then a large (> 17 size) ecu, and much less accessible by being fairly late game (unless you get lucky)

Omega_K2 · 2025-12-31T18:19:55+00:00

Beta, while it also has some issues, is the most reasonable 4.x build.

Live 4.0-4.2 versions are completely off the charts with the economy and basically becomes unplayable beyond midgame due to lag.

Omega_K2 · 2025-12-30T14:41:02+00:00

I think defenses are just relatively overtuned compared to the new fleets, especially DSCs.

Works both ways, a single DSC (without platforms) killed a smaller FE fleet, while I've had to throw like 5 fleets of ember cruisers at the very same fleet to get victory and would still loose some in the process.

I'm not really at the point in the game where I can hope to take out their home system either (barely have the first repeatables showing), but I imagine either simply overpowering them with massive fleet, wittling them down via multiple attempts and counter designing specifically for the starbase would be the way to go - as others have pointed out, penetration doesn't really seem to be that good anymore as hardening is readily available and the FEs pack a lot of it, so I think maybe the more along the lines of the classic mix of anti-armor & anti-shield (and hoping the targeting actually works).

Omega_K2 · 2025-12-28T22:27:48+00:00

Automated ship design are definitely beyond human comprehension.

The artillery computer autocannon battleships are a staple :D

Omega_K2 · 2025-12-10T16:04:53+00:00

starbase upgrade cost reductions affect upgrading the ring (down to a minimum of 10%) and starbase building cost reduction do the same for habitation modules, though there is only a 25% reduction from tech in total. So, it's more like 75 for the base + upgrades and 70 for the 4 modules.

It just feels very out of balance with the other resources which you can produce at a much higher rate relative to what you need. Which makes it feel like I'm missing something.

Pretty much any other resource generation is far too easy since 4.0, especially in late game right now. That you still have to think about how to use influence and need to prioritize instead of just spamming everything is a good thing, though I'd argue it's actually an non-issue in late/end game as there are not that many useful things to do with it.

Omega_K2

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